


These Bars Are Keeping Us Apart

by A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin



Series: Will We Be Stuck Like This Forever? [8]
Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Execution, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 03:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2295761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin/pseuds/A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Fate decides to be particularly cruel. She gives them one night to spend together, and they both know how it has to end…</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Bars Are Keeping Us Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neeka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neeka/gifts).



> Neeka asked for a situation where both Anders and Mitchell are in jail and they have to spend their last night together before being executed. I have stuck to this prompt as much as possible, but there are little alterations in some places - but I hope that you still enjoy this :)
> 
> I'm sorry for no updates in just over a month but I've had awful writer's block and I'm not entirely happy with the way that this oneshot has turned out - however, I have been working on some more prompts and other ideas, so hopefully they will get finished soon.

He’d been there long enough to begin to wonder whether it was night or day right at that moment. To wonder what day of the week it was and what everyone else was doing outside. The strange, almost tingling, sensation that he’d begun to feel recently had not subsided, if anything it had grown stronger, but the cause of the feeling had yet to manifest itself.

The routine of sleeping when he could bring himself to and then waking to the sound of his food being delivered and slid under the door had become normality for him now. Soon he’d be waking in anticipation of the food. Not that it was ever particularly appetising, mostly consisting of dried bread and the occasional lump of hard cheese. Still, it was better than starving.

Most days.

However, today, or whatever it was, something was clearly about to change.

The sound of loud voices accompanied the thud of heavy boots instead of the usual silence, as well as the clanking of metal chains and more footsteps than there should have been for the one guard.

Curiously, he narrowed his eyes as he peered into the gloom of the cells and tried to pinpoint the movement from the end of the long corridor, where the stone steps led back up to ground level. He could just about see two figures, one clearly the large burly guard who’d been the one to drag him down here in the first place, but the other was smaller, nearly a whole head shorter than his captor.

The new prisoner was making a fuss so he did the smart thing and kept his head down; he hardly needed more trouble now.

“At least you’ll have company,” the guard was saying as he pulled the other man along to the cell opposite, but his voice suddenly became nothing more than merely background noise, the argumentative tones of his prisoner taking over.

He did not dare look up as the guard set to work on the cell door, his hand firmly clamped over the chains on the other’s wrist, instead, he let that voice wash over him. For a moment, it didn’t matter that he was sitting on the soiled straw which lined the stone floor of his cell, all that mattered was what was happening.

But he wouldn’t look up, not while the guard was still there. He couldn’t risk him seeing; not in the slightest.

“Don’t forget to warn him about the rats,” the guard cast a quick glance in his direction before chuckling to himself and heading for the steps again.

As soon as he was gone, he chanced a quick look up at the occupant of the other cell. A flash of tousled blond hair gave him all the confirmation he needed and set his heart racing. He knew that the other man wouldn’t be able to see him properly in the shadows, this was all down to him.

But there was an ache which tugged at his heart painfully, one which he could hardly ignore in their situation. He already knew his fate, and it was a cruel one.

“I guess I should ask why you’re here,” he started, looking across at where the blond man was slumped against the bars of his own cell, the sound of his voice startling the other so much that he nearly jumped in surprise.

“John?” The call of his name was barely more than a hopeful whisper, though what either of them had to be hopeful about was debatable.

“Anders.”

And with those two words, it had begun. The tingling he had been feeling grew stronger until it settled like a comfortable warmth across his whole being. It was as though his soul had been satisfied in finding its other half and could not relax, even if the circumstances were most definitely not optimal.

“What are you doing here?” he couldn’t help but ask as his first question.

Anders let out a brief laugh.

“My friends convinced me to steal several sacks of flour from the manor,” he said, his forehead resting on the bars of his cell as he stared across at the shadows in which Mitchell currently sat. “We were caught with our hands almost literally in the flour.”

“And where are your friends now?” Mitchell asked.

Anders laughed again.

“They fled as soon as there was a sign of trouble, pushed the sacks onto me and ran for it. I was left to face the consequences by myself.”

“And now you’re here.”

“Yes,” Anders sighed, “I am.”

“Will they fine you?”

“No, they’ll hang me.”

The words hung in the air like a noose themselves. Mitchell could feel a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck as he realised exactly the nature of what was happening. They weren’t both just in prison, unable to reach the other, they were both going to die.

Of course, he should never have entertained the idea that Anders’ fate would be anything but death, knowing that his own path lead to the gallows, but he had thought that maybe the blond would be walking free in the morning and now that thought was gone.

“Will they hang you too?” Anders was still talking, his blue eyes gazing intently into Mitchell’s cell, lighting up briefly when the brunet shuffled forwards on the straw-lined stone so that his features were no longer shrouded in shadow.

“I killed a man,” Mitchell replied with a resigned expression, “They have no choice.”

“You killed a man?” Anders’ tone was entirely bewildered, “What drove you to that, John Mitchell? You’re not a cold-blooded killer this time are you?”

Mitchell’s faced screwed up in horror, as though dreading that that might happen one day.

“I was defending my sister,” he said sharply. “I had hoped that you would give me more credit, Anders Johnson.”

“You hardly sounded as though you were going to explain yourself!” Anders retorted defensively, “And the fact that we’re both shut up in these cells is doing nothing for my head right now! We’re so close but so far away and I doubt we could even touch our hands through the bars if we tried!”

To demonstrate his point, he squeezed his arm through the cell bars and Mitchell copied him, but he was right after all, and the space between their fingers seemed endless.

“Maybe,” Mitchell started, “Maybe, we should just talk about us.”

“Us?” Anders raised an eyebrow, “We don’t talk about _us_.”

“And why not?”

“Because it’s not like either of us can explain it.”

“Alright, fine. Let’s talk about our lives; these lives. Tell me about your family.”

“My mother’s dead, my father’s a drunkard and my brother’s trying to force me into a marriage with a girl who has the personality of a sour apple.”

“Anders! Try a little harder, please,” Mitchell’s tone of voice was exasperated. He just wanted a sense of the sort of man the blond had become in this life, since he’d never properly get to see it himself.

“I’m angry, damn it!” Anders suddenly cried, throwing his hands up in the air to illustrate his point.

“Are you angry at me?”

The fight suddenly went out of the blond and he collapsed back against the bars of his cell.

“No, of course I’m not,” he said, “I’m angry at this place. At our situation. At Fate. But never at you, John. Never at you.”

There was a silence between them for a short while, before Mitchell spoke again.

“I didn’t know that this was your village,” he said softly, “They dragged me here because I killed a man on your lord’s land and not my own. I’ve lived just a few fields away from you all this time.”

Anders kicked angrily at the bars in reply.

“I wish I’d made the journey over here before now,” Mitchell continued.

Anders shook his head.

“What’s the point of dwelling on what could have been?” he asked, “You were right. Let’s talk about now. Tell me about _your_ family.”

Mitchell smiled a little at that.

“I’ve a younger brother and a younger sister, twins,” he replied, “They said that my mother was lucky to have both of them alive when they were born; we were lucky not to lose her either. Is it true what you said about your family, Anders?”

“Sadly, yes,” the blond nodded. “I think we’ve rather a local reputation for being a family to avoid. My father drinks from dawn to dusk so my brother raised me, and now that he’s married to practically the only girl in the village that would have anything to do with him, he’s been trying to marry me off to his wife’s sister.”

Mitchell felt a hot flare of jealousy in the pit of his stomach at that comment, although he knew well enough that Anders hated the woman and she was hardly competition.

“But you refused, didn’t you?” the brunet still wanted confirmation.

“Do you take me for a fool, John? Of course I refused! I could not have married or loved anyone even if I had wanted to; it’s this damned curse!”

“Are you saying that loving me is a curse?” Mitchell’s angered cry rang out across the stone walls and floors. “Is this meeting a disappointment to you?”

“Yes, John! Yes, this meeting is a disappointment!” Mitchell’s face fell before Anders continued. “I’m forced to stay here all night with you, knowing that we’re both to die in the morning but I cannot touch you. I can see you but I can’t hold you or kiss you. This is torture, John, of course I’m angry. Though regardless, I shall stay awake all night trying to savour each moment of this torture because to speak to you is better than nothing.”

“And I shall not fall asleep either,” Mitchell decided, “We’ll spend our last night together, in at least one way, even if it is perhaps not in the way we would have liked.”

And so they stayed awake for as long as they could, talking about whichever topics came to mind and immediately took their fancy.

Mitchell spoke of his days working in the fields alongside his father, spending long hours preparing for the harvests and caring for the crops, but enjoying the company of the men he was working with.

Anders told him how much he would have loved to have been able to just work like the brunet had, but he’d always been small for his age and when the stronger boys had gone to work in the fields, he had been left behind to work on the less physically demanding jobs.

But this had earned him an education, or at least the basic ability to read and write, something which Mitchell was endlessly envious of, loudly declaring that:

“I wouldn’t even be able to recognise my own name if someone wrote it for me and told me what it said!”

“It wasn’t exactly the benefit that you think it was,” the blond shook his head, “It drew more attention to my family than we needed; we had enough of it already. I was the only one in the entire village who could read or write and all it did was isolate me further.”

“I wish I could have been there to support you,” Mitchell rested his head against the cell bars and gave Anders a regretful look.

“You couldn’t, John, we know that. And what’s done is done, so let’s just use the time we do have.”

And they continued to talk for a long time after that, until Anders began obviously yawning, no matter how much he tried to hide the fact. His eyelids felt heavy and it was all he could do not just to slump against the bars and drift off to sleep. Mitchell’s voice spoke through some sort of haze into his mind, the brunet suddenly seeing just how exhausted the blond was.

“Anders,” his voice was low and soft, “Anders, don’t punish yourself even more. I know that you didn’t want to go to sleep at all, but if you need to rest, then you need to do that.”

“I’m fine,” Anders tried to reply, but his words were slurred with sleep, and at the half-asleep tone which Mitchell had been familiar with waking up to in past times, the brunet couldn’t help but smile fondly. He settled himself against the bars and comforted his mind’s turmoil with the image of the sleeping blond in front of him.

* * *

Anders woke with a start some time later, catching sight of Mitchell, who seemed to have stayed in the same position as earlier. His first thought was that he’d slept the rest of the night away, and the guards would be coming for them any time soon.

“It’s alright,” Mitchell spoke up as soon as he saw the expressions flickering across Anders’ face, “You didn’t sleep for long.”

“Did you sleep? Because, John, you look terrible.”

“I’m glad to see you’re at least in better spirits,” Mitchell grinned as what he presumed to be Anders’ normal personality came through; he should have known, he’d been waiting for that side of the blond to show up all night. “And no, I haven’t slept; I did plenty of that while I was waiting for you to arrive.”

“You still look terrible.”

“You have pointed that out, thank you. I don’t think gaol suits me particularly.”

And at that they both burst out laughing, partly in amusement and partly because they just wanted some way of dealing with the situation, and that seemed like the best option.

But their sudden burst of joy was not to last, however, for suddenly there were the sounds of the heavy iron bolts on the dungeon doors being pulled back and then the thud of boots on the stone floor.

Both Anders and Mitchell ceased laughing immediately and glanced across at each other, their eyes growing wide in realisation that this was it. This was the moment that Fate had been building them up to. They were her playthings, and when she became bored of one story for them, she ended it and began another.

Just like that.

The guards led them out into the manor courtyard, the gallows standing in the centre as they always did. A small crowd of villagers had gathered around to watch the proceedings; they knew only Anders and had come out of a morbid curiosity to see one of the Johnsons meet the end that they thought the family deserved, rather than to pay their last respects.

The two men kept their eyes fixed on each other as much as they physically could. The guards kept them a distance apart, not so large that they were actually on opposite sides of the courtyard, but not close enough that they could subtly brush hands in a last attempt to gain some sort of contact.

Their crimes were read out for the benefit of the waiting crowd, who were most likely not interested in the justice being served but instead were there solely for the punishment which was to be dealt.

Anders cast his eyes across at the people who had once been his fellow countrymen; his own neighbours. There were children in the crowd, dragged along by their parents in the promise of something more exciting than another day harvesting, who caught his gaze unafraid as they regarded both him and Mitchell as though they were something to be in awe of. He wanted to laugh at how absurd the situation had become.

He couldn’t spot any of his friends among the villagers, at least, not any of the ones who had abandoned him to this fate, nor did he see his brother or his father, no doubt staying at home from the fear of being attacked by their neighbours. He glanced across at Mitchell, wondering whether any of his family had made the journey from their own village, but he could not spot any face in the crowd which he did not recognise.

They were alone now, and always had been alone when it came down to it.

The guards were pushing them forward, toward the steps on the platform, where the hangman was already waiting for them, his assistant checking that the knots in the nooses would hold. Anders was pretty sure that they would, the man didn’t need to keep up his nervous fretting over them.

“Stand here,” the guard pushed the blond up onto the raised block so that the nervous hangman’s assistant could shakily place the noose around his neck and then replace the irons around his wrists with rope. He couldn’t help wondering whether this was the man’s first job.

While a priest somewhere to his right made several speeches and blessings for their souls, he turned his head so that he could see Mitchell properly. The brunet was standing on his left, on a similarly raised block, his brown eyes wide and expressive as he gazed back into Anders’ blue ones.

Neither man said a word but they did not need to. They’d known each other long enough just to be able to tell what the other was thinking or feeling from their expressions and body language.

Anyway, this time anyone could have seen the message that they were trying to convey. It was so obvious that probably even the watching crowd could see it.

A part of Anders hoped that they had.

_I love you._

_I love you too._

And that was all that was needed.

In one last moment of desperation, the blond decided to try and reach out with one arm. The thought had occurred to him before, but it was not feasible when his wrists had been wrapped up in iron, but a few moments of wriggling a bit with the new rope had loosened the ties considerably; thank goodness for the hangman’s assistant’s nervousness!

It was just as he flung out his left arm that the order was given for the blocks they were standing on to be dropped, but with a rare bit of luck, he managed to locate Mitchell’s right hand even with the sudden jerk. The contact of their skin felt like sparks had just erupted between their fingers, so great had the desire to be able to touch each other been.

And those sparks were the last thing that Anders consciously knew before they spread up his arm and consumed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I have Tumblr now! I'm still trying to figure out how everything works at the moment but if you want to, please come and say hi to me or give me some tips on how to acually get myself sorted (I don't even have a profile pic yet!) :) My URL is agodavampiretwoheirsofdurin :)


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